


Phantom of Light.

by TayBartlett9000



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Confusion, Death, Gen, Holly - Freeform, Psychology, Resentment, Uncertainty, celebration fanfiction, good old lister and rimmer anxt, hologram, phantom of light, to keep him sane, typical Rimmer.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-22
Updated: 2016-09-22
Packaged: 2018-08-16 17:46:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8111611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TayBartlett9000/pseuds/TayBartlett9000
Summary: As I sit here, I feel very excited.  The first  episode of the brand new series of   Red Dwarf is due to air in just over two hours and as a celebration of my love of everything Red Dwarf related, i have written this, taking myself back to where it all began, with Lister as the last surviving human, and with Rimmer being brought back to keep him sane. Enjoy.





	

Phantom of Light.

By Tay Bartlett.

 

I had never believed in the afterlife. I had never dreamed that once we died, we  went to a place where it neither rained or snowed. I was always a practical and scientific man. I believed that once we died, we were dead and there was nothing we could do to change that.

And yet,  there I was, standing in the drive room, looking around in bewilderment as I took in the instrument panels, every one of them covered over with a fine layer of dust. It was as if none of the crew had been in this room for years, but that couldn’t have been right, could it?

What was going on? My memories were swimming around in my head like a sleeping human in a paddling pool, drifting aimlessly with no idea as to which way to go. Standing there, blinking stupidly, I tried to assemble my jumbled thoughts into some sort of coherent order. I failed miserably.

 I could remember very little  in terms of actual facts. What I did know at this moment was that  I had been having a blazing row with Todhunter about my   so called poor work on the drive plate. I had done it well and I knew it, but  he didn’t seem to think so. We had been  sitting there, a desk separating us, shouting as if we were at a stadium, although the voices were full of anger rather than  merriment. I had  raged and stormed at the man for at least an hour, saying that I had worked for hours on the bloody drive plate. I tried to tell him that I had been working completely independently because my ever present, if ever useless work colleague had been sent to stasis  for bringing an animal aboard that could have wiped out the entire crew. I tried to explain to him that nobody could have repaired that drive plate on their own, and that he was in the wrong for accusing me of shoddy workmanship. And  did he listen? Did he hell.

“Rimmer,” he had told me, using my sir name as everyone did, as if it rhymed with skum, “I have told you before, you can’t do sloppy work on the driveplate.” 

I had listened to his ranting, waiting for the hailstorm to subside, which took a good while. Then he dismissed me and I  made my way towards the  door.  God would I be glad to get out of there. I hated  Captain Hollister with his sanctimonious attitude to all who were of a lower rank than he was and I was seriously considering packing my job in. I had  no wish to work for that sardonic, weasel minded smeghead ever again.

I was prepared to make a dramatic exit,  fuelled  by anger and pent up resentment. I was totally prepared for a day spent sulking and telling Lister off for playing that stupid guitar, a thing he always did to get on my nerves.

But I never reached the door.

A funny  noise reached me. A funny noise and a smell. Both of these sensations were horrible ones, but neither were as horrible as the  announcement that followed shortly after.

“Emergency,” Holly called,  his voice ringing round the ship’s tanoy system, “a lethal radiation  leak has been detected. It is advised that you stay where you are.”

I had no time to even try and run for it. I had no time to say anything to Captain Hollister. I only had time to say two words. Those two words would become the last words that I ever spoke in my waking moments. If I had known that, I may have said something else, something with a bit more gravity to it. 

“Ghispacho  soup!” I spluttered, before my world became totally black. 

I opened my eyes, gasping for breath as I remembered what had happened. So, I actually remembered more than I had previously thought. They were scary thoughts. Terrifying thoughts. I had died. I, Arnold Rimmer,  could  remember my own death. How was that even possible?

“Good evening Arnold,” said a low monotone voice that came  from everywhere at once.

I looked up, searching for the source of that voice, finding nothing. Until I looked at the computer  screen situated directly above the desk. The dust covered screen showed an image of a man’s face, a man’s face that I knew so well, having looked at it at  least a thousand times before.

“Holly,” I said, breathing out a sigh, unaware of the fact that I had been holding my breath, “Holly, what the smeg happened here?”

The pixilated image considered me for the briefest moment, as if checking that all of my body parts were present and in the correct places. He then said, “It’s good to have you back after so long. I’ve been on my own for far too long now.” 

“What?” I asked, completely confused.

Holly rolled his eyes, unable to hold back his impatience. “Can you not remember anything?” he asked with a bite of irritation in his voice – something that I was not at all used to hearing.  “Can you not remember the radiation leak? Can’t you remember the dying bit?”

I paused. “Yes,” I replied after a moments quiet contemplation.  How could this bundle of electrical cerkets know what I was thinking? I continued regardless as if this question  did not puzzle me in the slightest. “So,” I said, in a voice that I hoped would sound calm and self assured, “I’m dead then? Is that what you’re saying?”

Again, the large pixilated eyes of the computer rolled in a sarcastic but wordless response. It was as if my question was a personal affront to him, though I couldn’t see how it could be.

“In a physiological sense, Mr Rimmer,” the slight East London voice responded after a second or so, “yes, you are dead. However in  real terms, you are not.”

“What?”

The electronic sigh that rippled from the many speakers mounted on the walls reverberated in my head. Could he not just get to the answer? Or was he enjoying making life, or what ever counted for life, difficult for me? I  settled upon the latter. “For three million years, Mr Rimmer,”  Holly continued, “the whole ship has been silent. You,  like ninety nine % of your colleagues, have been dead for three million years.”  

“Why only ninety nine percent?” I asked, my natural  suspicion and parranoya coming out at once after three million years of lying dormant in my   deceased  mind.

“Well, Mr Rimmer, that brings us to the very reason for your coming back in the first place,” the ship’s computer  replied smugly. “I have brought you back as a hologram so that you can  help  maintain the psychological state of the only human that managed to survive the radiation  leak. He has been trapped in one of the stasis booths all this time.”

My mind went into overdrive, if you’ll parden the terrible pun. I instantly began to think of who had survived. Who would I be expected to spend the rest of my hologramatic days with? Who had I been revived to help? Was it Captain Hollister? Would I be expected to contribute to some wild philosophical debates on the subject of life, one of the few topics that I might actually be able to beat him at? Or was it Todhunter?   This to   would certainly be a good thing. After all, Todhunter had what everyone else seemed to lack. He had brain cells. He had charm. He was a master of wit and he could carry on an intelligent conversation for hours. Oh yes. I  would love it to be Todhunter. I decided to forget my animosity towards him in the light of my new predicament. Maybe we would settle our differences in the coming months or years.  

“Who is it Holly?” I asked, hoping and praying that it would be someone with some real class and style.

The name that Holly uttered would have resulted in my death had I not been dead already. “Lister,” he said calmly, very much as if that one silible had not resulted in the shattering of my mental state.  

“Lister!” I yelled, unable to control myself, “you’ve got to be joking.”

Lister.

I had been recalled from the peaceful existence of death to serve as  psycho  therapist to David Lister? Suddenly I began to look upon death as a much more favourable  life option.

“I’m not doing it!” I said in a voice that was loaded with both anger and petulant sulk. I looked up at the large holographic face of Holly and shook my head firmly. “You can stick it, Holly. I’m not doing it.”

Holly only smiled at me in the manner of one who knows that he  holds all the aces in the game. “I’m afraid, Mr Rimmer, that the option does not rest with you. I have control of your hologramatic self and I will choose whether or not you play along. As a machine, which you now are, your life means less than the life of a human, and you will fulfil the role that I have assigned you.” He paused here to allow me to properly digest  the painful realisation that my life... death... call it what you will, was no  longer my own. Then he continued. “But first, I would like  you to read some leaflets about death that should help you cope with your predicament. The idea of death has not properly sunk in yet, I can tell, so you need to make sure that you understand the situation that you are now in.”

I glanced to my left and  saw several new looking  leaflets lying upon the table. I took one look at the title and realised that my day was about to get a  hell of a lot worse, even with the daunting prospect of seeing Lister again later on.  

But what could I do? I sighed, and resigned myself to my fate. Holly transmitted the data from the  leaflets into my brain with ease and I was subjected to the type of health and safety red tape that no other human should ever have to go through.

“Your death, and how to cope  with it.” What fun.


End file.
